We now have some more 2009 fantasy baseball projections for you. These are CHONE-based projected Point Shares for 10 and 12 team leagues available in the 2009 Fantasy Baseball Rankings menu at the top of the page.

If you want to download the 2009 projections, click here. CHONE takes more factors into account than Marcel including home ballpark and league (Free agents are based on neutral park and 50/50 AL/NL split). While we did not alter any CHONE projections, we did remove any player deemed unlikely to get to 300+ ABs (CHONE is admittedly over-optimistic on plate appearances which would distort counting stats). CHONE does not project saves but we added them in based on expected closing opportunity.

We plan to create the ‘official’ Point Shares spreadsheet in the late February time frame which will account for additional factors like expected playing time.

While Marcel and CHONE are fairly correlated (87%) in projected player fantasy value, there are several players with wildly different values between the two systems.

Hitters:
Why the big differences on some of these players? I’d say Soriano, Ortiz, Crawford, V-Mart, and Furcal are lower in Marcel because its Plate Appearance projections are more affected by last year’s injury-effected totals. CHONE factors in minor-league stats which explains Bruce and Cruz’s higher numbers (Cruz had a monster year in AAA last year but CHONE still seems overly optimistic).

I’ve got less of an explanation for the cases where Marcel > CHONE. Holliday’s lesser value makes sense since CHONE factors in league and park (bye-bye Coors). Thome and Chipper Jones are old – perhaps Marcel is more optimistic on older players? The rest of these hitters (Hamilton, Ludwick, McLouth, Pedroia) had career years in 2008 – maybe Marcel relies on last year’s stats more?

Pitchers:
I’m not sure why there are big differences on Brandon Webb. Sheets might be lower in CHONE partly because he’s a free agent and the projections factor that he might end up in the AL.

Vazquez. Holy fuckin’ shit! Vazquez is ranked #4 in 10-team and #2 in 12-team Point Shares when using CHONE. I can see Vazquez getting a boost from leaving the AL and a hitter’s park (US Cellular) to the NL and Turner Field. But to become a $41 fantasy pitcher. I don’t think so and here are few others that concur (Roto Savants, Hardball Times).

The three pitchers that Marcel estimates higher (Myers, Harang, Lester) follow the pattern we saw with guys like Hamilton and Ludwick. Lester had a career year last year which Marcel credits more for 2009. Myers and Harang had down years and Marcel punishes them more.

being the new guy , as far as player projection systems awareness , it seems fairly obvious that something else is needed .
my limited exposure to bill james’ work suggests that much of what he has to say is similiarly not to be trusted .
and though i expect that much of your work will be influenced by , and find it’s rudiments in , the work and findings of these other systems , i am anticipating to view it as a benchmark towards which these other systems should be guaged .
that is my intent .

i feel confident that this will be a good starting point for me , and am glad not to have invested too much time in these other works.

kind if ironic though .
initially , i was attracted to the “weirdness” of this site .

Regarding Javier Vazquez, I’d imagine that CHONE is giving a favorable projection based on his peripheral stats like K/BB and HR/9.

Using peripheral stats works well most of the time, because those stats are usually good indicators of a player’s future ERA (even better than looking at past ERA).

But Javier Vazquez has been the exception — the pitcher who has consistently managed to pitch worse than his peripherals. Every year the projections think he’s going to break out, and every year he disappoints.

@Steve: Hey Steve. I think CHONE projected what we all suspected with Holliday moving out of Coors. It’s only a mock though…better to learn now than mid-season…

@big o: I think Marcel and CHONE are both great as projection systems. They are both strong at estimating performance. The only real adjustment I’ll be making is with playing opportunity which can’t be fully automated. Even in cases where they differ and I’m not sure why (Webb), it definitely gets me to reconsider his value.

@big o: PECOTA is the projection methodology devised by Nate Silver @ Baseball Prospectus. It even has its own Wikipedia page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PECOTA. I definitely recommend shelling out for the Baseball Prospectus – good projections and entertaining read.

I don’t trust my projections to pay $40 for Javier Vazquez. But I do trust them enough that if everyone else thinks he’s just a 15-20$ pitcher, I’ll go to 22-23 and take a chance that he’ll be a big bargain this year.

My comprehensive analysis of the 2007 forecasts (posted on my blog) shows that Chone and PECOTA to be neck-and-neck. Nate Silver’s limited analysis of the 2007 forecasts shows similar findings. My limited analysis of the 2008 forecasts shows that Chone is ahead. Marcel is just a smidge behind both, which is impressive considering it basically gives a pass on all rookies. If anyone wants to dispute any of these findings, then please provide your evidence.

I would say that you MUST use the “reliability” column provided with Marcels. And, the playing time forecast is the most important thing in fantasy sports, so you have to get that right first.

My only suggestion would be to throw in ADP somewhere in there eventually. From there, we could do some sort of a +/- on where people are being drafted in relevance to their draft position and put a true “value” on their overratedness or underratedness.

@Steve: Yeah, I saw that… I can’t tonight. Gotta take care of my kids. Tonight we’re working on Eli’s changeup and Truman’s working on blocking the plate. Sure they’re 2 1/2, but it’s never too early, right?

Surely there will be another mock sometime soon.

@Rudy Gamble: What do you think of doing an “Over/Under” index? This would be the player’s value minus their ADP. Eh?

This is a really interesting discussion and I hope you don’t mind me jumping in.
This year, I am relying heavily on CHONE for my pitching projections. It’s my belief that ERA and (to a lesser degree) WHIP are both so noisy that they should not be projected directly. Instead, I’m constructing another composite measure based on projected K/BB, K/9, HR/9, and hits/9.
I’m pulling Saves from Marcel. I’m very interested in the Reliability measure but I’m having trouble figuring out how to use it. Treating it as a discount factor doesn’t seem right since it seems to include both positive and negative risk. Any thoughts?

I like with where you’re going with this. However, the first thing I would say is to eliminate hits/9 from your stats. The thinking is that hits allowed are in part a function of team defense, rather than pitcher skill. I like the idea of using the rate stat projections to come up with a projected FIP or QERA or something like that. If you want more of an explanation of this stuff, email me privately at nickojohnson at yahoo and I can give you some additional resources.

@zagi-CRO: We just focus on fantasy baseball here so we wouldn’t convert the data into expected winning %s for real teams. I don’t think Marcel, CHONE, or ZiPs does this but they might. Baseball Prospectus does this I believe – if they didn’t do it explicitly, you can just take hitting Runs, subtract Runs (given up) and then divide by 10 to determine the # of wins above/below 81 (I believe this is called the Pythagorean win projection).